Economic Value and Quality of Chinese Patenting

In this paper I present novel analysis on the rapid and accelerated growth of patenting activity by Chinese firms with focus on the international dimension. I show that this growth is fuelled by the globalization of R+D activities of foreign multinational firms off-shoring in China and by indigenous inventions processes of Chinese firms employing national inventors. Furthermore, I advance a full-fledged econometric model to analyze the granting, examiner’s prior-art searching, opposition, and renewal decisions and I argue on the value and quality of Chinese patents conditioned on the characteristics of the patent owners.